Mandy Lin, Author at Microsoft Industry Blogs

Women in manufacturing

Mandy Lin — Tue, 04 Apr 2023 16:00:00 +0000

The need to have a diverse workforce in manufacturing continues. Companies are focusing on ways to add new, multi-faceted talent to the industry. A specific focus within manufacturing is to attract and retain women in the workforce. In the United States, women made up about 47 percent of the American workforce but only 30 percent of it was in manufacturing.¹ The good news is that on average, women in manufacturing earn 16 percent more than the national median annual income for women who are employed.²

In April 2023, we hosted a panel discussion at our booth at Hannover Messe 2023 titled “Women in Manufacturing.” Watch the video from the event.

Hannover Messe 2023

Join us for the Women in Manufacturing session on Wednesday, April 19, 2023, from 3:00 to 4:00 PM PST at our booth in Hall 17.

I was the host for this special session and our panelists included:

Audrey Colle, Product Engineering Manager, Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing and Mobility at Microsoft.
Judy Cubiss, Director—Global Industry Marketing Lead for Industrial Manufacturing at SAP.
Karolina Rzepiejewska-Malyska, Vice President of Operations at Hexagon Manufacturing Intelligence.
Dr.-Ing. Silvia Rummel, Director of Manufacturing at Avanade (and formerly Festo).
Mandy Lin, Senior Director of Manufacturing Industry at Microsoft.

These women are leaders and subject matter experts in the manufacturing industry. During this session, we came together to discuss the future of women in manufacturing and how to promote and support them. For more information about our panelists, please see the “Our Panel” section below.

What we talked about

Our panel discussed ways to be an ally to women in manufacturing. The first step is having the knowledge that attracting and retaining women in the manufacturing industry is essential. Building employee resource groups has been one successful method. Other ways to be an ally continue to develop.

Mentorship is an important element in both attracting and retaining women in manufacturing. Mentors are leading by example and are sharing their experiences and lessons they have learned along the way. These women are living examples of what is possible for women coming into the industry, but also for girls beginning to explore future career opportunities. Mentorship programs have been shown to drive retention, but only a relatively small percentage of companies currently provide that offering. The official Women MAKE America (WMA) Mentorship Program trains mentors and mentees before matching them based on more than two dozen criteria to maximize their relationship. The WMA Program will train 1,000 mentors by the year 2030.²

While allyship and mentorship both support women in manufacturing, there is a difference. Being an ally means intentionally taking action to help women in manufacturing progress in the industry. One example of allyship in action is to assess existing processes for areas that inherently have barriers built into them, and then work to improve the process to eliminate them. At the core of mentorship is creating relationships, and sharing knowledge and resources with the goal to help the mentee advance in her career.

Professional development opportunities will continue to promote manufacturing as an industry of choice for women. In March 2022, Women MAKE America launched the 35 x 30 campaign to increase the percentage of women in the manufacturing workforce to 35 percent by 2030. This industry-wide, action-oriented campaign features a best-in-class female-to-female mentoring program, increased company engagement, and expanded access to professional development and training. The campaign aims to add half a million women to the manufacturing industry by 2030. United States manufacturers can close the “skills gap” by 50 percent simply by bringing 10 percent more women into the industry.²

Our discussion also examined how technology can be used to improve access, methods, and processes. For example, automating a function and enabling the ability to monitor that function remotely gives that employee the freedom to perform that task without being required to be at a desk. This improves efficiency and benefits all employees.

Our Panel

Audrey Colle—Audrey is a General Manager in the Microsoft Cloud for Industry product group. She leads a worldwide team focusing on innovation in the Manufacturing and Mobility industries. For more than 20 years at Microsoft, she has learned, developed, and applied new technologies in the areas of speech recognition, search and advertising relevance, and core cloud services as well as specialized for industries.

Judy Cubiss—Judy is the Global Industry Marketing Lead for Industrial Manufacturing at SAP. She is currently responsible for industry marketing to industrial manufacturers globally. Prior to this role, she worked in marketing, product management, and consulting for technology companies. Her career began as an Instrument Engineer at a chemical plant.

Mandy Lin—Early in her career, Mandy was a consultant focused on procurement and sourcing which led to a supply chain focus at MIT Sloan, a product operations internship at Apple, and a Cisco software supply chain role. Before she joined Microsoft as Senior Director of Product Marketing for Retail, Consumer Goods & Manufacturing Industries, she was the Global Vice President of Marketing, Industry, and Customer Advisory at SAP.

Dr.-Ing. Silvia Rummel—Silvia is the Director for Digital Advisory at the IT consultancy at Avanade where she focuses on digitalization projects in the areas of shop floor, process monitoring, and quality improvement as well as supply chain resilience for manufacturing companies. Besides this, she teaches as a lecturer at the FOM University of Applied Sciences. She has 12 years of industrial experience in mechanical engineering, especially in the areas of research and development, strategy, and production.

Karolina Rzepiejewska-Malyska—Karolina is the Vice President of Operations at Hexagon Manufacturing Intelligence. She has an MSc in Engineering in Mechatronics, a Ph.D. in Nanoscale Metrology, and an MBA in Business Strategy. She has more than 15 years of experience in various positions in product management focused on the development and industrialization of the instrumentation and testing methods within the manufacturing processes in various high-tech industries with a strong focus on digitalization and disruptive and innovative elements of business development.

Learn More

Here are some resources where you can learn more:

“Women in Manufacturing“—For some inspiration from women making a difference in manufacturing, check out these blogs and interviews.
United States Census Bureau More Women in Manufacturing Jobs in Every Age Group.
Follow us on social and visit our website to stay informed about Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing and learn how you can help manufacture a more resilient and sustainable future.

¹ United States Census Bureau, More Women in Manufacturing Jobs in Every Age Group.

² 2023 Women MAKE Awards, Recognizing Women Leaders in the Manufacturing Industry.

The post Women in manufacturing appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs.

3 IDC FutureScape prediction reports for manufacturing in 2023

Mandy Lin — Mon, 03 Apr 2023 15:00:00 +0000

The International Data Corporation (IDC) is one of the world’s leading market-intelligence providers for the information technology and consumer technology markets.

The IDC published three reports with predictions for manufacturing in 2023 that we would like to highlight for this audience:

Microsoft recently had the privilege of speaking with John Snow, IDC’s Research Director for Product Innovation Strategies about these new reports. John has a wealth of knowledge and insight into the forces driving change in manufacturing and is one of the co-authors of IDC’s “IDC FutureScape” predictions for manufacturing in 2023.

The predictions in these reports are for the years 2023 through 2027.

Each report covers the top 10 predictions for 2023 and they touch on three key topics:

Technology will gain data that will spark insights and change.
Improvements to supply chain management and sourcing strategies will lead to increased efficiency and resiliency.
The need to attract and retain talent with the right skills, training, and experience will continue to be critical to success.

The importance of technology and data

Data will be gathered to form insights, from which decisions will be made to change many aspects of the industry. That part is not new, it’s happening right now. What will evolve is how that data is gathered, and how insights will allow real-time decisions. This will allow the product developers to mine service interactions and work order data to improve product quality and meet their targets. Designers will have real-time feedback on quality issues and improving product success rates will go up by 3 percent. Taking an ecosystem approach to quality management will be adopted by 50 percent of G2000 original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) by 2026.

The importance of data security will continue to be at the forefront of every business. By 2027, manufacturers will increase the use of the internet of things (IoT) and operational technology (OT) cybersecurity solutions at the edge, cutting OT cybersecurity breaches in half.

Have you deployed enterprise-wide AI-based tools? These tools can help maximize the value of data and result in up to 5 percent improvement in revenue and profit. By 2025, 40 percent of manufacturers will have achieved this milestone.

The industrial metaverse will be included by 20 percent of G2000 manufacturers by 2025. Including the metaverse in the digital roadmap will address advanced simulation, cross-domain collaboration, and safety.

In the Product and Service Innovation space, IDC predicts that by 2025, 70 percent of G2000 OEMs will deploy digital twins for collaboration across organizations and ecosystems to accelerate product innovation, improve quality, and reduce cost. This technology can be used to create models to predict how connected environments can work.

We see the power of the cloud every day from our customers. For instance, Bosch has developed an Integrated Asset Performance Management system powered by a digital twin that runs on Microsoft Azure. This system gives machinery the ability to indicate when they need maintenance, reducing costs and improving up-time.

Manufacturers will use technology to build and improve customer satisfaction scores. By 2026, more than 65 percent of equipment OEMs will partner with their clients to access real-time information to drive remote monitoring and resolution activities, with customer satisfaction scores of up to 5 percent.

In the supply chain area IDC predicts that by 2026, 45 percent of G2000 organizations will operationalize integrated sustainability in the supply chain and effectively report impact data, enabling a 10 percent reduction in waste and improving competitive advantage.

Rebalanced resiliency for the future

Gaining efficiencies and bolstering resiliency will benefit the industry in the coming years.

Managing supply chains to reflect the realities of inflation and efficiency will allow organizations to recover 2 percentage points of margin by 2023. Implementing multi-shoring sourcing strategies to address risk will result in a 10-percentage point improvement in supply reliability for 50 percent of companies by 2024.

Adopting product carbon footprint as a key metric will become the standard. This is because, by 2026, regulations and sustainability-linked lending will require them. An estimated 60 percent of global manufacturers will adopt this metric.

In the Supply Chain 2023 prediction report, the IDC predicts that by the end of 2023, 50 percent of supply chain organizations will have rebalanced resiliency efforts to the realities of inflation and necessary efficiency to recover 2 percentage points of margin.

In the Product and Service Innovation space, IDC predicts that by 2026, market relevancy and survival needs will force at least 60 percent of G2000 OEMs to partner with engineering services providers to codevelop and maintain products and ensure operations resiliency.

In the Supply Chain area, IDC predicts that by 2026, 55 percent of G2000 OEMs will redesign service supply chains based on AI, ensuring the right spares are available and positioned to solve 75 percent of issues prior to failure.

Recruiting and retaining talent

Finding and retaining talent with the right experience and skills will continue to be a critical target going forward. By next year, digital literacy will be a key skill set. These skills are needed to support digital transformation and enterprise technology adoption.

After you have successfully found the right people, with the right skills and training, technology will help keep them safe. Specifically, by 2024, 5G connectivity will improve worker safety, resulting in a 20 percent reduction in lost time accidents.

In the Product and Services area, by 2023 60 percent of G2000 OEMs will set up dedicated incentives and programs to drive engagement improving worker satisfaction by 10 percent annually resulting from the difficulties to acquire service talent.

According to Jon Snow, by the end of 2024, 50 percent of manufacturers will prioritize digital literacy as a key skill set when recruiting talent. Manufacturing long was seen as the quintessential “blue collar” job—one that didn’t require a lot of book smarts but still paid well. That’s no longer the case. The growing use of technologies such as predictive maintenance using IoT sensors and AI makes digital skills a requirement.

We hope that the manufacturing industry can utilize these powerful insights from the IDC FutureScape reports to gauge progress, identify areas to focus on, and improve how to be strategic when planning and preparing for the future.

Learn More

We are making all three of the IDC FutureScape reports available below:

The post 3 IDC FutureScape prediction reports for manufacturing in 2023 appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs.